Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Review: The Sacrifice of Tamar

The Sacrifice of Tamar The Sacrifice of Tamar by Naomi Ragen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book - knowing Ragen to be a well-respected author and amateur sociologist when it comes to the Orthodox Jewish community - but I didn't. It is about a woman named Tamar who is married to a well-respected scholar in her isolated ultra-Orthodox community. Tamar is raped early in the book, and the results of that incident follow her through her life and that of her family.

What I did like about the book was that her two best friends represented two alternative approaches to Judaism within the Orthodox community. Still, I found the character development weak, the plot predictable, and the community in many ways reduced to the archetypes and stereotypes already familiar to me. The writing was easy to follow, but not good enough to make up for the other shortcomings.

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